Being an account of one yarnthirsty wench and her never ending quest for the land of milk, honey and natural fibers!

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Did I mention that I am awfully proud? I swished the skein of (now dog spitty) yarn in some cold water and then hung it up to dry with a weight on one end as I've seen ppl do. Not knowing exactly HOW much weight to use, I settled for a length of rolled up ethernet cable which seems to be pulling the skein down enough to keep bits from overtwisting, but not too hard. *cough* because one does what one can with what one has and what one knows.

I also spun some more yarn. Go me! I'm very proud. I can't seem to get it much finer than a very heavy worsted weight - it seems pretty similar to the Cascade Pastanza in weight if not a titch heavier. But it's pretty even on this go 'round. Not a lot of bumps and breaks at all. So I'm going for even and will worry about sizes later. I figure even is more important.

This is one of those deceptively simple tasks that's actually super complex with all manner of subtle skillsets and nuances of knowledge not emerging until you've just done it and done it and done it for a while.

I can't for the life of me understand why people have historically looked down on these "women's tasks" because this requires skill and understanding. It's practically alchemy. Definitely transmutation. Wool into yarn. Yarn into sweater. Worn out sweater into smaller sweater. All without Amazon dot com, just the knowledge handed to you from the other women in your life. I feel connected to something interesting in this process. I wonder if other spinners feel that.

Also, did you know that you can buy a whole POUND of Corriedale wool top for around twenty two dollars? I think you could probably spin a good bit of yarn with a pound of wool top, couldn't you?

1 comment:

You probably already know about it but I'm pretty sure you'd be interested if you don't. There's a great book called Women's Work about the impact women's fiber work has had on history. Really good read :)